Jacqueline Hennessy
:quality(82)/media/news/Hennessy-Jacqueline_-How-to-disappear-completely-scaled.jpg)
Jacqueline Hennessy
For our final instalment of On Stillness, we have chosen a work by Jacqueline Hennessy who graduated from NAS in 2019 with a Masters of Fine Art (Painting). In her ghostly paintings of female figures, Hennessy explores how to give visual form to her lived experience of being in the world. Her painting process involves staining clear primed Belgian linen with thin washes of raw umber and lead white oil paint. Hennessy builds her images up over time in transparent layers, gradually developing fragile and ghostly feminine figures that seemingly emerge as they dissolve into the linen support.
The significance of Hennessy’s work lies in its attempt to create painted self-portraits that surpass the autobiographical and deal instead with phenomenological and conceptual concerns about the mystery of beingness. By setting up a dialogue between painting and photography, Hennessy questions relationships between the two and explores painting’s potential to transcend the descriptive and articulate more complex and enigmatic experiences of being in the world.
Image: Jacqueline Hennessy, How to disappear completely, 2019, oil on linen, 122 x 92 cm, National Art School Collection, acquired through the NAS Collection Fund, 2019 © the artist
Latest News
Thursday 09 July 2026
:quality(82)/media/100425_Dobell-Prize_Kristen-Sharpwinner_Rosemary-Lee_001_Peter-Morgan-2048x1477.jpg)
Thursday 09 July 2026
Applications are now open for The 25th Dobell Drawing Prize. The Dobell Drawing Prize is Australia’s leading prize for drawing, and an unparalleled celebration of technique, innovation and expanded practice. Presented at the National Art School in partnership with the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, this biennial exhibition continues to highlight the enduring relevance and changing role of dra…
Tuesday 30 June 2026
:quality(82)/media/exhibitions/260603_LRG_BabetteRobertson_01_0051-1.jpg)
Tuesday 30 June 2026
Please see below for current and forthcoming exhibitions and events featuring our staff and alumni. National Art School: Inherent Vice Inherent Vice is curated by NAS alum and current staff member Amelia Skelton, with curatorial support from Dr Elizabeth Pulie. The exhibition features NAS alumni Mitchell Davis, Drew Connor Holland and Sadie Whalen, alongside work by sessional lecturer Katy B …
Tuesday 30 June 2026
:quality(82)/media/news/Nick-Collerson-2026_Dithyramb_0384.jpg)
Tuesday 30 June 2026
Please see below for current and forthcoming exhibitions and events featuring our staff and alumni. Dr Carolyn McKenzie-Craig: Becoming Penguin (Act II) Head of Printmaking, Dr Carolyn McKenzie-Craig, presents Becoming Penguin (Act II) at PARKER Contemporary, Brisbane. The exhibition asks what it means to seek protection from a world that continues to decide who is seen, who is suspected, and w…